Blanket Disclaimer: I'm not repeating this, so pay attention. They are not mine. Any relevance or closeness to anyone else's story is obviously a complete coincidence. At the time of writing, the characters were legally available for Free and Fair Use. And one day, I will have nice, shiny characters of my own to abu—uh, play with. Today is obviously not that day. *grin*
Notes: Blast from the past. I know. RL has not been kind in the last three years, but there comes a point where you just stare it down and say, 'heck with it,' and write anyway. This is what you get as a result. I can't guarantee when you'll get chapters, but at least I'm starting, right? (I know what you're going to say: that after these years this'd better be a damn good story, yeah? Hang on and find out with me, lol.)
tags / TW: torture (mostly implied). blood. injuries. canon level violence. permanent injuries. coma. recovery. hospitals. icky stuff in general, but not a lot different to canon. because the author rewrites canon. like alot.
Chap. Summary: What came before. Because to hook any big fish, first you need the right bait...
Notes: Short chapter to start with – kind of a revamp of the epilogue of Circle 1, and also because the cut is awkward for the next one. I've been poking at this cut for like, a year, and I don't think I'm ever going to be fully happy, but really, there comes a time when you've just got to say no to yourself and post the stupid thing. And also thanks to my betas (who'll probably chose to be anonymous for this, because I would too) for reining me (and my commas) in, and also my tendency to write both ridiculously long and ridiculously short sentences –- which this is a case in point. So. Yeah. I'm going to stop this thing here.
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CIRCLE II
BETWEEN THE CRACKS
1. Bait
It says something about Gotham's city planners that even her most ancient streets don't flood when the hurricanes and nor'easters and extreme weather comes knocking. Not that this is that kind of thing. Its not.
Its just...unseasonably wet. Yeah. That's one way to describe it.
Truthfully, its been raining for days. Weeks. It's the kind of wet where people give up on the idea of staying inside (and dry) and venture out anyway. A few brave souls even go without the umbrella; they're also fool-hardy, because the next few days are inevitably spent finding wet things in odd places. Or shivering. One thing this rain is not is warm.
It is also, at least, not snow.
Snow is always worse than rain. Rain, at least, can be dealt with, with boots and umbrellas and raincoats.
Snow brings everything to a halt. Snow keeps people cooped up in houses. Snow makes people look out of their windows. Even worse, people spend time outside in the snow. More to the point, snow makes people bored.
People see things when its snowing.
They're watching for relatives, they're on the internet watching videos, at the windows waiting for it to stop so they can play, waiting for customers, watching snowfall, watching, watching, watching. They're just. Plain. Watch. (Which is precisely why they made sure this rain is not going anywhere near snow.)
But no one sees things in the rain. And if they do see things, they don't know (or don't believe) what they've seen. Even better, the sound of the rain obscures everything else.
It is, truly, the perfect weather for an ambush.
Its only the icing on the perfect cake that this is the weather in which their prey has chosen to emerge.
Just like they'd hoped.
The actual moment of ambush is over and done with quickly.
Barely more than a minute from surrounding their prey to the actual capture.
Just like they'd practiced.
Afterwards, its a simple matter to sweep the alley for debris and unwanted traces, though of course the rain helps with that. Blood washes away quickly in the rain, after all. It doesn't take long (even less time than the actual ambush, actually) for there to be no trace that anything untoward ever happened.
Exactly as they planned.
Barely a minute, and there's no evidence they can find that Dick Grayson ever entered this alley. And then the shadows withdraw...
Leaving the rain as the only apparent witness to what has happened.
TBC